


Jugular

by sexysadie



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: 1960s, 1963, 1965, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Drug Use, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Minor Character Death, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Beatles, gratuitous use of the word hate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 12:40:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15819075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sexysadie/pseuds/sexysadie
Summary: “Fucking hate my ma, too,” he said, making sure to slur out the ‘f’ and spit the ‘hate’ just enough to be convincing. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Paul intently for any sign of emotion, for a flash of something across his features. Of course, there was nothing, save for the same careful mask Paul slipped on when they talked about their mothers – eyes forward, forehead smooth.Alternatively titled: 'John and Paul are Nasty to Each Other'.





	Jugular

**Author's Note:**

> So I haven't written anything for ages because of school, etc. but I just got my GCSE results back and I'm so pleased with them! So naturally I sat down and wrote something absolutely miserable.   
> I like to think of this as something of a character study. I've always found J&P's personalities fascinating and their dynamic really really tricky, so here's my completely overdramatised shot at it for your pleasure. There's J/P if you squint (hard).   
> ALSO! This is just a work of fiction! I don't really think either of them are really like this!!!  
> Enjoy!

**1960**

They didn’t talk about their mothers, not really. Everyone thought that they did.

When Julia died John didn’t utter her name for months, not even to his own flesh and blood, let alone Paul – the hurt was too new and too raw. John had far too much self-preservation to lay himself out so completely to someone, peel back his skin to reveal the nastiness boiling just underneath, so he sat tight and let that hurt settle into his bones, so he could carry it around with him like a little briefcase.

Paul, he supposed, had let his hurt escape in _healthier_ ways. When he talked about his ma there was nothing like John felt in his eyes. The rage and grief John seemed to have coursing hot in his very blood was absent in Paul, and- oh, of course it was. John could picture Paul, open-faced, doe-eyed and crying pretty, whispering in the dark to Mike, reliving that last Christmas or that time when or when that happened. And of course, Paul’s father looked to him like some sort of saint, because Paul cooked tea _and_ did the ironing _and_ now he made good money with the band, just like everyone said he couldn’t, and to top it off, the poor boy’s mam was dead!

‘What a brave lad.’ (In fact, John would go so far as to say that the whole thing had made Paul’s life that little bit better.)

But every now and again, Paul would offer John that smallest bit of information, held out and cleaned and dressed in his palm like a sugar cube. “Me mam would have hated how you speak,” he said once between mouthfuls of chips by the river, a few months before Julia went. “She used to try and speak all posh, like. Said her ‘a’s funny.”

The look on his face was carefully blank, as if John were an easily-startled horse. He shoved more chips into his mouth.

“Probably why you talk like you’re on the BBC,” John offered. Under the sounds of hissing machinery and loud voices from the docks nearby, they were silent and stiff. He realised how desperately hard he was trying to feel some sort of sorrow for poor little Paulie, all motherless at the tender age of fourteen. He found nothing.

The Mersey’s murky water slapped against the concrete bank. Leaning back, John stared at the point where the grey sky slid into an equally grey horizon.

“I used to make fun of her. She’d speak on the phone, all middle class, and I’d take the mick, and- I don’t know why.”

John didn’t have to look at Paul to know what his expression was. Earnest, with a little of that practised sorrow creasing the corners of his mouth, with those awful, blank eyes watching him intently. An involuntary shiver made its way down John’s back.

“I don’t know why.”

A sad softness had crept into Paul’s low, lilting voice. John hoped he wouldn’t have to sit here and listen to him pretend to cry.

While Paul structured his sentences lovingly and cautiously, sometimes John’s words would run away from him drunkenly and the bitterness crouched in his throat would spring out of his mouth like a venomous snake. He never remembered what he said in the morning. But then again, he didn’t have to, because the words were all etched into the framework of his being and swirling in the forefront of his brain, ready to spill. When he was younger he’d chant them into his pillow like a mantra

_I hate you I hate you I hate hate hate hate you_

mouth open wide in a silent noise of anger, like if he could unhinge his jaw wide enough the _hate_ would climb right out of him.

“I hate you,” he’d say to Paul, just occasionally, to see if he could get a reaction. “I _haaate_ you, you little fag. You fucking cow-eyed queer. Fuck you.”

He did hate Paul, in a strange, casual way. Not Paul himself, but the ease with which he lived –  the music that dripped from his fingertips like honey, his soft profile and pretty mouth, and the milk-blankness behind his eyes where sadness and anger should be hot and painful. Paul could treat the memories of his mother like pretty little party favours to hand out to his very favourite people to please them, to show them just how soft and vulnerable and damaged he was, all while the blankness slid over his eyes. As if something was missing there.

“I fucking hate you,” John insisted as Paul lugged him down the street, one arm over Paul’s shoulders, foot in the road. It was quiet, well past one, and the orange streetlights were humming. The corner of Paul’s mouth kept turning downward in the very beginnings of a frown; it made vicious joy burn deep in John’s stomach.

John wasn’t as drunk as he’d been acting like.

“Fucking hate my ma, too,” he said, making sure to slur out the ‘f’ and spit the ‘hate’ just enough to be convincing. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Paul intently for any sign of emotion, for a flash of something across his features. Of course, there was nothing, save for the same careful mask Paul slipped on when they talked about their mothers – eyes forward, forehead smooth. “She left me, y’know. She fuckin’ dropped me off like a- like a sack of shite, little hook-noosed, gingery kid on me auntie’s doorstep. And then she lived down the road from me all those years, fucking shagging a fuckin’… _spiv_.”

“You’ll regret saying this in the morning,” Paul said simply, and John felt a white-hot flash of rage bolt through him. God, he just _hated_ Paul and his calm, smug sureness about _everything_

_I hate you I hate you_

just like he hated Julia, and his father, and Mimi, and he realised that where death had left him a raw, open wound, messy and bloody and hateful, it had sewed Paul up, sutured and cauterised him, until he was little more than smooth white scar tissue.

-

**1963**

The music kept coming, though they had a seemingly never-ending pile of old songs rotting somewhere in the backs of their minds. All it took was for George to play a familiar chord and for the rest of them to catch on, and for a second Studio Two had sweat dripping off of stone pillars and the smell of spirits in the air.

Before, songwriting was a hobby of sorts. They might be sitting on the bus and knock one out if they felt like it, fiddling around in a battered notebook with the words ‘baby’ and ‘true’ and ‘cry’, and adding a choice riff at the start that really made the Cavern’s crowds howl. John was often too drunk on stage to remember the words anyway, so it didn’t really matter.

But then Please Please Me rocketed to the top of the charts and clung there and suddenly, as if overnight, it was all serious business.

“God,” Paul said one evening as the sun was throwing long golden tongues of light into their hotel room. He looked as tired as John felt. “I feel like I’m writing the same stuff over and over.” The nameless place that was hosting them wasn’t particularly inspiring, grey and limp in a way only English towns manage to be.

“Let me see.”

Paul’s neat writing only went on for a few lines. The tops of the ‘I’s were all curled in a way John remembered making fun of back when Paul was still just a stuffy Institute kid and John an art student.

_Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you_

_Tomorrow I’ll miss you_

_Remember I’ll always be ~~yours~~ true ~~(??)~~_

_And then while Im away I’ll call home everyday_

_And I’ll send all my loving to you._

“Bit P.S. I Love You.” John handed him back the notebook. “It’s good, though. What’s the tune?”

“Haven’t got one.” Paul looked at John from where he’d flopped backwards on the bed, the sun lighting him into someone younger with whiskey-gold eyes. That wasn’t like Paul – he always wrote the tune first, then threw together whatever lyrics seemed to fit the mood of the song. Music always came to him first. Therefore, in John’s humble opinion, the songs sometimes came out a little wonky, like an expertly sketched painting with slightly wrong colours. John liked to write his lyrics first (and then get Paul to help him with the music, whatever conclusions you wanted to draw from that).

“I’d replace the ‘call’ with ‘write’, birds love that,” John offered.

“Cheers.”

They went on like that, shallow, meaningless chatter and rallied lyrics until the sun had gone in and left the room in dark blue shadows. Lying in bed, John watched a blinking light outside the French doors and thought about Paul’s lyrics. While they weren’t a masterpiece, they were the sort of sweet and sappy stuff that would sell, especially if Paul could produce one of his catchy melodies out of thin air. So John should be pleased; a new single like Love Me Do would be all they need to push them past conversation pieces and into serious musicians.

But then- and John heard the whine of a petulant child in the back of his head – the Beatles had always been _John’s_ thing. It was John and Paul, Lennon-McCartney. It hadn’t been _Paul_ and the Moondogs, and it hadn’t been Paul who’d scraped together that ragtag band of teenagers, given them instruments and called them the Quarrymen. It had been John-

-but when Paul played them All My Loving a couple of days later, John felt as though someone had pulled the carpet out from beneath his feet, because of course it was good. No, it wasn’t fucking good, it was great. Perhaps one of the best things he’d written yet. And Paul sat there at the piano and _preened,_ pretty eyes all crinkled up with pleasure and hands in his lap, and made a big show of thanking John for helping him with the lyrics because wasn’t he humble, wasn’t he kind?

Every now and then John wondered how Paul did it – how he could flip from the flat-eyed blueprint of a teenager he’d once been to the nation’s charming, animated new sweetheart in no time at all. He supposed it worked like a tap, one way for on (write your silly little love songs) and the other for off (stare me in the face, unblinking, while you tell me about how your mother died).

-

**1965**

Paul played them ‘Yesterday’, and everyone thought it was just wonderful.

He and George Martin had taped it and produced it in the lazy evening hours after a session when John had been making himself stupid with grass and drink. It was a beautiful song; John couldn’t deny him that. The cello did this great little bluesy thing, and the guitar was low and pretty and Paul sung about his frigid ice-queen Jane as though he really was breaking his poor heart over her.

“You’ve never heard it before?” Paul was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, biting his lip and very close, fixing Brian with a soft brown stare from under dark lashes. From the corner of the room John watched Brian pretend to rack his brain while the faintest blush crept up his neck. “It doesn’t ring any bells? At all?”

Brian looked embarrassing, like a teenage virgin. “Er… well, no, but I’m, er, sure I can get someone to… to check.”

He excused himself, and Paul showed him a flash of that hundred-watt smile. It slid from his face as soon as Brian was out of sight and John felt a sour little knife twist somewhere inside him. He couldn’t make Brian blush – he made Brian stutter with awkward indignation and flush with annoyance, but God knows any sway John had over him or his limp wrist had withered away a long time ago.

“Where’d’you pinch that one from, then?” John asked. They were alone in the studio and his voice echoed off of the high ceiling, along with the retreating click of Brian’s shoes.

Paul picked up his guitar, plucked a couple of notes. “Dreamt it.”

_Oh, fuck you._ “I told you not to smoke before bed. You do dream up terrible stuff.”

Paul shot him a long-suffering look. “I’m a bit worried I have pinched it, actually. Don’t want a telegram through,” he put on an affected accent, “‘Dear Sir, you’ve stolen the song from a cornflakes advert from 1953 so please send us one thousand pounds or we’ll tell the Daily Mail on you.’” He strummed the starting G softly and then turned his deft fingers running across the frets, picking out a folky little melody. “I like your Bob Dylan one,” he added absently, as though John were a battered dog begging for scraps of praise.

“Thanks,” John said flatly, then in the same breath, “you gonna toss Eppy off next time? Or are you keeping the relationship strictly professional?”

Paul’s head snapped towards John with cat-like swiftness, brows drawn and eyes squinting. “What?”

“Just you, talking to him like you’re a bleedin’ cathouse girl,” John snapped. The irritation that had been building since he’d heard that godforsaken song, creeping over his shoulders and round his throat like a pair of squeezing hands, was making his words sharp and disdainful. “He’ll get the wrong impression if you’re not careful.”

Briefly Paul opened his mouth, perhaps to snipe back, but thought better of it. He fixed John with an even stare. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The message was there, floating just beneath the surface of those calm words, almost daring John to carry on. To say that five-letter word. John had used to fling it around, back in Liverpool, but now that they made the front pages every other day it was to stay out of everyone’s mouths, lest the press catch even a whiff of it.

_I hate you, you fucking queer_

“Just let him be.”

Paul scoffed. “That’s rich, Lennon.”

“What I’m saying, _McCartney_ , is that you flouncing about and batting your eyelashes like a fucking poof isn’t fucking good for any of us. I mean, our music’s enough to make anyone wonder nowadays.”

John wanted anger, or annoyance, perhaps. Just something other than the cool indifference Paul had started shrugging on every morning like a coat, ever since they really started making it big.

Instead, Paul leant back in his chair, satisfied, and John knew that he _knew_.

“Right,” he said softly, and rose out of his chair. He placed his guitar against a piano carefully, deliberately, while John sat there and felt hot shame sting the back of his neck. He’d done exactly what he’d always vowed not to – he’d laid himself out like a cadaver on a mortuary table for Paul to prod and examine, exposed his own flank while chasing Paul’s. In his own vindictive search to humiliate Paul, to provoke some sort of reaction from the man he knew had built his walls three feet thick, he’d let his own ugly, poisonous jealousy bubble to the surface.

That _fucking_ song.

John listened to Paul’s footsteps disappear up the steps and out of the studio, the clunk-click of the door and the purr of the Aston’s engine as it faded into the distance. Then he threw his mug at the wall and seethed as the tea ran down the plaster in little rivers.


End file.
